From his obsession with "the haters and losers" to his episodes of mania and delusion, it's all there on Twitter VIDEO

EXCERPT:

To make sense of his aberrant behavior, you need to understand, specifically, what is psychologically wrong with Donald Trump. His diagnosis is the Rosetta Stone to cracking the Trump Twitter code, revealing its underlying structure, and unfortunately, how much ­danger all the rest of us are in as a result. He is a malignant narcissist who is also on the bipolar spectrum. From a psychiatric perspective, the prognosis could not be more dire—for us.

Much has been written about Trump having Narcissistic Personality Disorder. For example, Trump embodies the diagnostic criteria of believing himself to be “uniquely superior,” (“Only I can fix it”) to a degree that would be comical if it weren’t so frightening. He appears to literally believe that he knows more about everything than everybody, despite his lack of experience, study, intellectual curiosity, or even normal attention span. An amusing video montage made its way through social media, where through the miracle of editing, in the course of three minutes Trump brags about being the world’s greatest expert in twenty different subject areas, literally using the exact same sentence—just fill in the blank. “No one knows more about (fill in the blank) than me,” he repeats over and over, while it becomes more absurd, as his imagined portfolio of expertise expands with each improbable bombastic claim. When candidate Trump was asked from whom he sought foreign policy advice, he responded, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain.” Just how good a brain he has is up for debate, but the narcissistic fantasy that any brain is so good it doesn’t need a brain trust bigger than me, myself, and I, is scary and crazy. “I know more about ISIS than the generals, believe me,” he boasts. Trump has more ways to say, “I am the best” than anybody. Believe me.

But as critics have pointed out, merely saying a leader is narcissistic is hardly disqualifying. Most are. But malignant narcissism is to garden variety Narcissistic Personality Disorder what a malignant tumor is to a benign one. Both are bad, but only one will kill you.

“The quintessence of evil,” was how Erich Fromm described malignant narcissism, a term he introduced in 1964. Fromm, a refugee from Nazi Germany, developed the diagnosis to explain Adolf Hitler…. READ ARTICLE

Thursday, Aug. 24, 2017Remember, you don’t have to be a member of Twitter read Tweets there, even from Donald Trump.

He was on All In With Chris Hayes tonight.

Duty to Warn therapists consider Trump to be a malignant narcissist. However this includes all or most of the characteristics of a sociopath. Here Donnie Deutsch reads the definition of sociopath on MSNBC. Other panelists take it as a joke at first but Deutsch brooks none of their flippancy.

At his rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, Donald Trump remarked, of his decision to take on the Presidency, “Most people think I’m crazy to have done this. And I think they’re right.”

A strange consensus does appear to be forming around Trump’s mental state. Following Trump’s unhinged Phoenix speech, James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, said on CNN, “I really question his … fitness to be in this office,” describing the address as “scary and disturbing” and characterizing Trump as a “complete intellectual, moral, and ethical void.” Last week, following Trump’s doubling-down on blaming “many sides” for white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Senator Bob Corker, a Republican of Tennessee, said that the President “has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability, nor some of the competence, that he needs” to lead the country. Last Friday, Representative Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat of California, introduced a resolution urging a medical and psychiatric evaluation of the President, pointing to an “alarming pattern of behavior and speech causing concern that a mental disorder may have

After Trump’s “fire and fury” remarks about North Korea, earlier this month, Dr. Bandy Lee, a professor of psychiatry at Yale Medical School, sent her second letter about Trump to all members of Congress, warning that his “severe emotional impediments” pose “a grave threat to international security.” Four colleagues joined her this time, but, she told me, “In the beginning, I was trying to write letters to Congress members and I couldn’t get anyone to sign on, even though nobody disagreed.” Her book, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” forthcoming in October, collects essays by more than a dozen mental-health experts and makes the case that the Trump Presidency is an emergency that not only allows but may even require psychiatrists to depart from the Goldwater rule. Seeking contributors, Dr. Lee was mindful that most colleagues would be nervous walking the tightrope, so she approached prominent writers who might have enough stature to withstand criticism, including Philip Zimbardo, Judith Herman, Robert Jay Lifton, and Gail Sheehy. (Next month, Dr. Lee will have a closed meeting with several as-yet-unnamed lawmakers to advise them on how Congress might convene mental-health professionals to review the President’s state of mind.)

NY Times Opinion: Truth, Lies and Numbness

You grow numb. You grow weary. I recall discovering a few weeks back that President Trump had lied about two phone calls, one from the president of Mexico and one from the head of the Boy Scouts. The calls, supposedly to congratulate him, did not exist. They never happened. They were pure inventions. Asked if Trump had lied, the White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said, “I wouldn’t say it was a lie.”

I actually remember shrugging. The shrug was terrifying. This is how autocrats — or would-be autocrats — cement their power. They wear you down with their lies. They distract you. They want you to believe that 2+2=5. They want you to forget that freedom withers when the distinction between truth and falsehood dies. In a dictatorship there is a single font of “truth”: the voice of the dictator. Remember Trump at the Republican National Convention a little over a year ago: “I am your voice.” And now his voice is everywhere.

There’s the scripted Trump voice, which is fake. There’s the unscripted voice, which is genuine. The two tend to alternate; call this the choreography of disorientation. It’s confusing, like having a president who isn’t really a president but instead acts like the leader of a rabble-rousing movement. From “Truth, Lies and Numbness” NY Times

Until now, talk of Trump's erratic behavior and alleged narcissism was common on social media, late-night talk shows and among political opponents. But Trump's "fire and fury" comments about North Korea, a raucous rally in Arizona Tuesday and changing response to the violent protests in Charlottesville, Va., crossed a line for some Republicans and brought the conversation into the mainstream, even among some supporters. A poll by the media and technology company Morning Consult over the weekend showed 55% of respondents said Trump was not stable

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Weds., Aug. 23, 2017 6:00 PM - If you missed Rachel Maddow you probably won’t know why I am posting this image. If you can, watch the re-run or record it. Remember the infamous dossier - now it appears to have been verified.

Thousands of men of Jewish descent and hundreds of what the Nazis called ‘full Jews’ served in the German military with Adolf Hitler’s knowledge and approval.

Cambridge University researcher Bryan Rigg has traced the Jewish ancestry of more than 1,200 of Hitler’s soldiers, including two field marshals and fifteen generals (two full generals, eight lieutenant generals, five major generals), « men commanding up to 100,000 troops. »

“I’m not joking about it or being a smartass; this is a man who is not well.”

Members of a CNN panel on Tuesday openly questioned whether President Donald Trump is mentally fit for office after he held a boisterous and unrestrained rally in Phoenix…. “I do believe that after tonight a lot of people are going to be thinking that he’s not just completely unfit, that he’s just completely ill-equipped to hold this office but that he might be psychotically demented and ill of the mind in order to take this office and in order to continue with this office,” said Maria Cardona, a CNN political contributor. Watch CNN panel on You Tube here.

“There was no sanity there. He was like a child blaming a sibling on something else,” CNN’s Don Lemon said immediately after the rally. “A man clearly wounded by the rational people who are abandoning him in droves, meaning those business people and the people in Washington now who are questioning his fitness for office and whether he is stable.”

David Chalian, CNN’s political director, said Trump was “totally unhinged” during the speech. Rick Wilson, a conservative pundit, went even further.

“It was an astounding chain of lies tied together by lunatic asides by a man who obviously is mentally unstable. I mean, I’m not joking about it or being a smartass; this is a man who is not well,” Wilson said. “This is a man who is not qualified or mentally or morally fit to be the president of the United States and tonight was one more proof of it.”

“He alternated between being a whiny 6-year-old who’s had his Nintendo taken away and between being the cranky old man who’s being out there condemning everyone who doesn’t worship him adequately,” he added. “I know the 25th Amendment is a remote possibility, but if people around him don’t think this guy is absolutely batcrap crazy, they are mistaken.”

Carl Bernstein, one of the journalists who helped uncover the Watergate scandal, said Sunday during an appearance on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” that reporters needed to ask more questionsabout Trump’s ability to be president.

7:00AM

Is the country inured to how stark raving mad Trump is? How vicious and sadistic? How willing he is to incite racism? How he is getting worse? How beyond the pale his “campaign” rally last night was? Consider the following :

The “Morning Joe” host (Joe Scarborough) was appalled that crowd members shouted out calls for McCain’s death as Trump attacked the Republican senator for casting the deciding vote against the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

“Who talks like that?” Scarborough said. “But here’s another question: Who cheers at that? Who cheers when a man speaks derisively about an American war hero who has given his life to the people of Arizona and the United States of America in a POW camp, is battling brain cancer, is going through chemotherapy.

And not only are they derisively going along with Donald Trump — but people are actually shouting that they want John McCain to die. LINK

"The radical fringe activist from Miami once belonged to a violent black supremacist religious cult and he runs a handful of amateur, unintelligible conspiracy websites. He has called Barack Obama The Beast and Hillary Clinton a Ku Klux Klan member. Oprah, he says, is the devil. Most curiously, in the 1990s, he was charged, then acquitted, with conspiracy to commit two murders."

But Michael the Black Man loves U.S. President Donald Trump. And President Trump’s campaign apparently loves him right back.

It’s unclear if the White House or President Trump’s campaign officials are aware of Michael the Black Man’s turbulent history or extreme political views, but he and his followers have stumped for the president at his inauguration and the Super Bowl.

In July, he posted video footage of himself at the Mar-a-Lago Club, President Trump’s so-called “Winter White House,” for the Republican Party of Palm Beach County’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner.

Next week’s cover, not a link

Wearing a black dinner coat over a white “BLACKS FOR TRUMP” T-shirt, Michael the Black Man posed with the local GOP’s chairman, apparently took a photo of first lady Melania Trump and recorded a selfie video that showed his arm slung over the shoulder of Florida Gov. Rick Scott.

“I saw you on TV with Trump,” Scott can be heard telling Michael the Black Man. “You did a good job.”

At a campaign rally in late October 2016, down in Sanford, Fla., Trump even gave the “BLACKS FOR TRUMP” signs an approving shout-out….. “Look at those signs behind me,” Trump said to the roaring crowd. “Blacks for Trump. I like those signs.”

Trump promises a government shutdown, hints he'll pardon Joe Arpaio — and vows to make history white again

The assumption on the part of well, everyone, even those who complimented him for his presidential mien, was that teleprompter Trump was not permanent and he would immediately revert to his natural state: racist, immature and crude.

This is progress. It took most of the media and the political establishment more than two years to absorb the fact that the Donald Trump we saw on the campaign trail was the real thing. There was no hidden statesman, and his antics weren’t an act. Just because he is capable of woodenly delivering an unconvincing speech written by someone else, it doesn’t mean that he will stop tweeting every outrageous thought that passes through his mind while watching “Fox & Friends” during his obviously elaborate morning hair and man-tan ritual.

Trump went to Arizona solely to bathe himself in the febrile adoration of his followers after a tough couple of weeks defending Nazis from the hostile elites in Washington. Many people were aghast that he was going to hold one of his raucous campaign rallies in the wake of those odious comments about Charlottesville, a rally where he was sure to employ his usual divisive rhetoric and protesters from all sides would undoubtedly gather outside and possibly mix it up with one another.Below: This hits close to home. The only person I know who is likely to be hit hard by the Trump picks for various departments in my niece, an accomplished agriculture lawyer who works in the enforcement area for the USDA.

Several Waterfalls Cafe (my morning coffee shop) denizens asked me for my take on Trump’s speech about Afghanistan. I think I’ll call this segment of season one (and hopefully the final) of the Trump presidency “The Stuff With The Generals.”

Once again we are defining presidential normalcy so far down that we’re in an alternate universe where shifting gravitational fields resemble a rabid squirrel caught in traffic. Rapid cycling up, down, sidewise, and weightless states pull us in random direction and no direction at all.

Trump is like a mad monarch sometimes constrained by his sane advisors, or as pundits like to say by the adults in the room.

Not all monarchs and dictators were malignant narcissists like Trump. Some were pure garden variety psychopaths — manifestations of sadistic evil. Others were probably clinically psychotic. America has had none of these.

With Trump we keep having to say that his behavior is not normal. It’s unprecedented in all American history with the exception of the period when Nixon was mentally in free-fall and Alexander Haig and others made sure he wouldn’t start a nuclear war.

Now we have the supposed adults, Tillerson, the multi-medalled generals who I think Trump secretly envies, and Ivanka who in a less than grown-up way is rumored to get daddy to board the sane-train by putting her head on his desk (or perhaps his lap) and sobbing.

I don’t know enough about how to deal with the Afghanistan War to expound on it with any degree of confidence. This being said, it seems to me that if we couldn’t end it when we had more than 100,000 troops there it’s unlikely we’ll have better luck with a few thousand additional troops now.

I agree with what I am hearing on MSNBC and progressive radio, that Trump is in a no-loose position. If the generals manage to eek out enough of a success to allow Trump to declare victory and withdraw, he will take the credit. If we suffer an ignominious defeat Trump will blame the generals, saying he should have trusted his intuition all along.

And the beastly beat goes on… rimshot.

…………...

This article, like other addressing the question as to whether Trump is actually crazy, or crazy like a fox, only has the same two answers. 1) He’s a malignant narcissist who is also sociopathic and delusional; or 2) he’s a malignant narcissist who believes anything which enhances their grandiosity.

Excerpt: I have spoken with people who have known Trump for decades and who say he has changed. He exhibits less self-awareness, these longtime acquaintances say, and less capacity for sustained focus. Indeed, it is instructive to compare television interviews of Trump recorded years ago with those conducted now. To this layman’s eyes and ears, there seems to have been deterioration.

I am not professionally qualified to assess the president’s mental health; psychiatrists and psychologists who have the proper credentials and experience to do so are silenced by ethical rules. The stakes are so high, however, that the officials who work alongside Trump and observe him closely bear a tremendous responsibility. There is a huge difference between sounding as unhinged as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and actually being that unstable.

It is of some comfort that Trump is surrounded by levelheaded military men — Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Chief of Staff John Kelly — who are unlikely to do anything rash. But no one elected them.

It is uncomfortable to talk about the president’s mental health. But at this point it is irresponsible not to.

The work Duty to Warn mental health professionals have been doing for over a year, and Trump’s escalating erratic and unhinged behavior have led to Google News searches for “Tump mentally ill” like this:

One of the most common questions I am asked by folks who know how fervently I am working to get the word out that Trump’s malignant narcissism makes him unfit to be president is “would Pence be any better?”

Assuming that Pence becomes #46, once he tidies up the mess the president he so ass-kissingly supported, he may have little time left in his term to do much of anything.

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The crucial thing for progressives is how much of the Pence evangelical and very far right agenda mostly non-idealogical Republicans are willing to vote into law. Consider these quotes from the AlterNet article:

Virtually all of his policy positions are in sync with the GOP’s draconian 2016 platform, adopted at the convention soon after he introducedhimself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.” While it might be a relief for virtually everyone left of the political center should Trump be fired, Pence actually knows how Washington works and could deeply damage government and many public policies.

A quick survey of Pence’s stances is revealing—beyond his habit of never meeting alone with a woman other than his wife because he believes such interactions are implicitly sexual. As the Washington Post put it, “There’s little distance between that perspective and that of the ultra-Orthodox Jews who refuse to sit next to a woman on an airplane, or the fundamentalist Muslims who demand that women be covered head to toe to contain the unstoppable sexual allure that renders men unable to control their urges.”

With Pence we can easily predict what he wants to do to the country by looking at his record as governor of Indiana. Here’s the Dirty Dozen:

He cut tens of millions from the budget for higher education, social agencies and human services.

He signed bills blocking local governments from raising the minimum wage or requiring businesses to offer better benefits.

He pushed cutting income and business taxes, but would not sign laws reversing other regressive taxes.

Pence was a big booster of privatizing government services, whether new highways or traditional public schools.

He clashed with educators over treatment of transgender students.

He rolled back energy efficiency standards, denounced and fought with the federal Environmental Protection Agency and declared Indiana was a pro-coal state.

He signed a bill to let people keep guns in their cars parked on school grounds, recruited the NRA to train the Indiana National Guard and pre-empted the city of Gary from suing gun manufacturers whose weapons were sold illegally.

He and the state GOP defunded Planned Parenthood, even with southern Indiana experiencing an HIV epidemic. He opposed needle exchanges for drug addiction treatment. While he did accept Obamacare funds to expand state-run Medicaid, he added bigger co-payments for recipients.

Pence received national attention after signing a so-called religious freedom bill in 2015, prompting some big state employers—notably Angie’s List—to cancel a state-based expansion in Indianapolis, costing the state 1,000 jobs. The backlash forced him to rescind parts of the law.

He signed into law a bill banning abortion procedures and penalizing providers. A federal court overruled the law, saying it was unconstitutional.

Pence also tried to create a state-run news service, to circumvent local media. He’s repeatedly stonewalled reporters seeking public documents.

And he tried but failed to prevent Syrian refugees from resettling in the state. A court stopped him.

Is this the dream agenda for enough Republicans in Congress? More to the point, if Pence becomes president prior to the mid-term elections, how many GOP members of the House want to run on having supported some or the majority of these?

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There’s no doubt we will have a Republican White House until the next presidential election. Because of who is running for the Senate in the mid-terms it seems unlikely that more than a few Republicans will loose their seats though even one or two would be a big win for the Democrats. We only hope that this is a miraculous election for the House, and that Democrats actually take it over. A slim chance — so I don’t want to get my hopes up — but it is possible if the Democrats get enough really good candidates.

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In 2019 I expect we’ll see a scramble in both parties for the nomination. If Trump manages to survive the scandals and keeps the illusion of being mentally stable going, I see a few brave Republicans as contesting his nomination. If it’s President Pence running, I see as crazy a primary as the last one.

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With so many excellent possible candidates, I think the Democrats will have an inspiring primary and this time around will select a candidate who will win handily. If Congress swings and becomes the majority party in both the Senate and House, look to what we could call “the great undoing” as all the damage to our progressive agenda is repaired.

Another decrepit structure as seen from the River Walk in Boston - see previous day divider.

Watching Trump this week has been pitiable : Trump is both seriously ignorant and highly unlikeable, and has confirmed as much this week with his shocking dissembling over what should be described pure and simple as an act of domestic terror, an act of murder.

It has been pitiable observing this casino owner and reality TV host trying to kickstart the few cogs he has in his brain as he attempts to address the straightforward question as to the wrongness of Nazism. Most upper-primary school students can answer that one in a jiffy.

—— But as the dog returns to its own vomit, on his third attempt (to respond to Charlottesville) , at a barely coherent press conference, Trump reverted to position one and went even further, saying again that the whole Charlottesville thing was kinda complicated, with “some very fine people on both sides”.

There is a hairy-chested view among the more vocal conservative commentators that all this is simply a case of Trump being a bold iconoclast, sticking it to the biased liberal media and all those nancy-boy PC types in refusing to tow an orthodox line.

It’s rubbish, and it’s dangerous rubbish.

What Trump is doing is broadening the parameters of what constitutes acceptable political discourse and conduct, inviting in the very people his own nation fought with great and noble sacrifice.

He does this because he has no sense of history and no concept of implication. He is mentally ill-equipped to think back or beyond a 140-character barrage on Twitter, or a deft one-liner at some journo he can’t stand from CNN or the New York Times.

Click image for Newsweek article

This is a long article. I recommend reading it to those who are interested in how this subject was addressed by the psychiatrists writing the various editions of the DSM dealt with it since 1961. The following excerpt is for those who just want to read how the article concludes:

Click image for AlterNet article

The fact that many people who act on extreme racist beliefs lead high-functioning lives may also stand in the way of labeling this demographic as mentally ill. In the early 1960s, Jewish author and journalist Hannah Arendt covered the trials of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann for the New Yorker. She was shocked that “half a dozen psychiatrists had certified Eichmann as ‘normal,’” despite the fact that he orchestrated the mass murder of millions of Jews. One psychiatrist described his familial relationships as not just normal but desirable.

In the decades following the Holocaust, the idea that someone who commits crimes against racial and ethnic minorities could still be considered sane by psychiatrists was unsettling, says James M. Thomas, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Mississippi. “Many people turned to the explanation that there must be something wrong with the German psyche to have allowed this to happen.”

Recognizing that Trump has a tendency of doubling down on irrational behavior when being pushed into a corner, Foxman (Holocaust
survivor and former Director of National
Anti-Defamation League and said
now might be the time for Ivanka Trump
and Jared Kushner to take matters
into their own hands and step into the
roles of Mordechai and Esther. “Trump loves
his daughter. She is the apple of his eye,
and I saw him, he likes his son-in-law,
but he certainly loves his grandchildren,”
Foxman explained. “They need to sit down
with him, and say to him, face-to-face,
‘Do you understand what message you’re
sending to your grandchildren?
That it’s okay for people to march down
and yell get rid of the Jews, we don’t
want the Jews. And you say this is nothing,
this is like people who protest against
something that they don’t like.’
I don’t see anybody else. I think this is
the moment. People have said, ‘Well
maybe Jared …’ Jared’s grandparents are
Holocaust survivors. People say, ‘Well,
maybe they were put there to be Esther
or Mordecai.’ Well, maybe they have.”

Social scientists knew that creating a clinical definition was critical. They understood that stigmatizing extreme racism could help society wake up to the abnormality of this pathology, and possibly prevent other genocidal acts. Three psychologists devised the California F-scale —F stands for fascist—a test used to evaluate a person for “authoritarian personality type.” They thought understanding how people were seduced by Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric could help prevent future such movements. Although the F-scale fell out of favor, it enabled psychologists to identify common traits of people who cling to dangerous ideologies. They included an inflexible outlook, strong allegiance to leadership, a tendency to scapegoat others and a willingness to lash out in anger and violence.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, on July 8, 2017, members of the Ku Klux Klan gesture during a rally calling for the protection of Southern Confederate monuments. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Sander Gilman, who teaches psychiatry at Emory University, and co-authored with Thomas the book Are Racists Crazy?, agrees that dangerous racists leading seemingly normal lives are hard to identify. “Racists, sadly, cope quite well with daily life,” says Gilman. “They have a take on the way the world should be, and that take functions in the world they live.”

Gilman does not favor a standalone diagnosis of extreme racism, and believes that attempts to categorize such people as mentally ill masks the greater problem of society allowing them to commit vengeful acts. “Those people are evil. They’ve made bad choices, but they’re not choices you can then attribute to mental illness,” says Gilman. “The minute you do that you let people off the hook.”

If Trump loses the Murdoch media empire, that leaves him with Beitbart, The Daily Stormer, and InfoWars.

Excerpt:

At 5:55 p.m. on Thursday, James Murdoch sent an email to a list of blind-copied recipients offering a striking repudiation of President Trump and a pledge to donate $1 million to the Anti-Defamation League. He addressed the note to “friends,” stating in the first line that he was writing it in a “personal capacity, as a concerned citizen and a father.”

Yet for the son of the conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who speaks regularly with Mr. Trump, it’s impossible to separate the personal, the political and the corporate.

James Murdoch’s message, which he wrote himself, was sent to a number of business associates from his company email address at 21st Century Fox, the global media conglomerate where he reigns as chief executive. And within two hours, it had been leaked to the news media, offering a window into the nuanced internal and external politics of the Murdoch media empire.

The email also raises questions about whether it is a harbinger of change at the Murdoch-controlled conservative-leaning media outlets — including Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post — and the political direction of the company under a new generation of Murdoch leaders, James and his brother, Lachlan, the company’s executive chairman.

One of the surprising contrasts you see as you stroll along Boston’s River Walk.

Saturday, Aug. 19, 2017

Evening - Late breaking news:

Text added by me

EXCERPTS: If and when the American Kennel Club gets around to assigning a new breed for dogs that resemble President Donald Trump—portly with short paws and a chow chow mane of Chlorox blond?—it should not neglect to single out the breed’s primary behavioral trait: Trump is what dog handlers would call a “fear-biter,” not a naturally fierce or aggressive hound, but one that snaps and chomps when frightened…… ; Why do some dogs become fear-biters and some do not? Dog handlers tell us that the beasts can become fear-imprinted by trauma after being beaten with sticks or terrorized by sudden and violent intrusions into what they consider their territory. It’s anybody’s guess what made Trump so enraged. Every president has clashed with the press, but there was something about Trump’s Charlottesville presser that placed him in a special category. Always sensitive to criticism, he now growls and nips at every doubting question, baring his teeth at questioners. If he keeps going mad dog on the press, how sanely will he perform when Mueller asks him questions in depositions?

Not that this one of Trump’s “councils” (actually an official agency) could have had any influence… but it’s still good to see they disbanded it before Trump could do it himself.

I find it mind boggling that even the most intellectually challenged GOP members of Congress don’t realize that a president with the track record over the last four weeks has to have a severe mental health problem. Watch this video:

The anchor’s summary of recent White House doings is a doozy.

Polls show that one in five strongly approve of a president who encourages white supremacists and is mentally ill (as severe and danger0us malignant narcissist that DTW therapists have ever observed) and one in four trust what they hear from the White House.

While Trump’s public approval has hovered near 40%, some of that support is soft. Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, looking at a range of recent polls, estimated his hardcore backing at about 1 in 4 Americans.

In a recent poll by CNN, for example, 24% of respondents said they trusted all or most of what they hear from the White House. A poll by ABC and the Washington Post found 24% saying Trump acts in a presidential manner. In a poll earlier this week from Monmouth University, 24% of respondents said they supported Trump and couldn’t think of anything he could do that would change their minds.

A poll by Marist College for National Public Radio and PBS, released Thursday, found that 27% approved of Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville. The same poll found that 20% of those surveyed said they “strongly approve” of the job he is doing as president.

Below, look closely...

Trying to cross a busy Boston street

Thursday, Aug. 17, 2017

FROM ISRAEL -

Includes references to prominent Duty to Warn therapists Drs. Bandy Lee and John Gartner.

EXCERPTS with emphasis added

‘Crazy'

The combination of impulsiveness, frenzy, empty grandstanding, superfluous skirmishes and delusional portrayals of reality, to name but a small part of the traits that Trump displays every day, ensures that talk of his emotional and mental capacities is never far away. Less than a month ago, after the failure of Trump and the GOP leadership to repeal and replace ObamaCare sparked concerns that they wouldn’t get a budget passed either, a hot mic picked up Rhode Island’s Democratic Senator Jack Reed telling Maine’s Republican Susan Collins that he fears Trump is truly “crazy.” On Thursday it was reported that three Democratic members of Congress would consult with Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee about setting up a panel of that would issue a verdict on Trump’s mental state. If the panel decides that Trump isn’t all there, more pressure will be exerted on Vice President Pence and Trump’s cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment and relieve Trump of his duties.

Lee is one of the leaders of “renegade” psychiatrists who claim that Trump’s disturbed state is a matter of life and death – pikuach nefesh, if she spoke Hebrew – which overrides the professional obligation of the so-called Goldwater Rule that prohibits professional mental hygienists from diagnosing public figures from afar. In April, Lee was one of the organizers of a conference in New Haven that featured John Gartner, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, who claims that Trump is suffering from incurable “malignant narcissism.” Over 61,000 mental health professionals signed a petition organized by Gartner calling for the 25th Amendment to be invoked.

The psychiatrists and psychologists are at odds about the legitimacy of diagnosing Trump by remote control, but also about the diagnosis itself. Some believe he suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder, others that he is a psychopath and still others that he is a classic case of Dark Triad, which is narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism combined. Each one of these disorders can be measured on a scale from harmless to disturbing to very dangerous, depending on their severity and circumstance: Numerous studies published in recent years have found that the proportion of narcissists and psychopaths among politicians and CEOs of major companies on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley is much higher than in the general population, and similar to that found among hardcore criminals. The experts haven’t decided whether such individuals can lead their organizations to long-term success or whether their faults will inevitably lead to tragedy and ruin.

Psychiatrists have devised various tests and evaluation methods to assess the existence and severity of such personality disorders, some of which routinely feature as harmless quizzes in popular magazines. One of the most respected and widely used evaluation mechanisms designed to diagnose psychopaths was put together by Canadian psychologist Robert Hare, based on Hervey Cleckley’s ingeniously titled classic textbook on psychopathology, “The Mask of Sanity.” Hare composed a 20-part questionnaire on classic traits of psychopaths in which 0, 1 or 2 points are given for each, depending on their existence and degree. A score of over 30 – 25 in the United Kingdom – indicates a psychopathic personality. The characteristics examined include superficial charm, a grandiose sense of self-worth, excess need for stimulation, pathological lying, manipulative behavior, lack of remorse or guilt, lack of emotions, lack of empathy, a parasitic lifestyle, poor self-control, promiscuous sexual behavior, early behavioral problems, lack of realistic long-term goals, excessive impulsiveness, irresponsibility, failure to accept responsibility for ones actions, numerous short-term marriages, juvenile delinquency, a tendency to violate parole, and an indifference to the scope and variety of illegal actions.

Psychiatrists insist the test should be administered only by professionals and must be complemented by a personal interview and other examinations, but that doesn’t prevent mere mortals from evaluating their acquaintances, their president or even their prime minister.

The Washington Post created a facsimile updated
every five minutes showing what Trump would see
when he logged onto his Twitter account. Click above.

It was disconcerting to see a man checking out in front of me at Freddy’s (a local big box store) with a holstered black semi-automatic pistol (like the police carry) on his hip. He was wearing jeans and a regular shirt and a cowboy hat. I’ve seen police detectives once or twice in plain clothes in stores; but in addition to their handguns they have their badges on their belts right next to the weapon, presumably not to alarm anybody.

I didn’t think Oregon was an open carry state so I took a few photos of his truck as we were leaving, and stopped at the sheriff sub-station to ask about open carry. I talked to two deputies who acted as if I was taking up their valuable time.

It turns out that Oregon is open carry state, which means anybody can carry a side arm as long as it is visible.

According to flag etiquette tattered American flags like this aren’t supposed to be displayed. I wasn’t about to remind him.

Friends where I live told me they’d seen this truck around, but it will be upsetting but not surprising news to them that the driver is carrying a pistol.

Trump persisted in repeating this claim during the election despite its being debunked.

Excerpt:

Since before he even entered the White House, the word impeachment has swirled around President Donald Trump. But now, after his equating of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with those who oppose them, one Democrat is calling for Trump to be removed from office without the need for a lengthy impeachment process.

Representative Jackie Speier of California has advocated for Vice President Mike Pence and the Cabinet’s use of the 25th Amendment to declare Trump unable to discharge the powers of the presidency.

“POTUS is showing signs of erratic behavior and mental instability that place the country in grave danger. Time to invoke the 25th Amendment,” Speier tweeted Tuesday. His comments came after Trump said there was blame” and “very fine people” on “both sides” following last weekend’s white supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, that led to the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer.

So, Trump has the support of (white nationalist leaded Richard) Spencer, Bannon and a bunch of pudgy, pugilistic, socially awkward men in polo shirts carrying torches and Confederate flags and raising their arms in Nazi salutes. Elsewhere, though, his support is shrinking. His poll numbers hit a new low this week — 34%, according to Gallup. Given that a quarter of Americans consistently prove their looniness by subscribing to preposterous conspiracy theories like birtherism and Pizzagate, that poll number indicates Trump is getting ever closer to being the president only of fools and fascists.

No doubt positioning himself for a job in the Trump White House… or at the least a gushing Tweet, he wrote the above OpEd for The Hill.

…. in an interview posted on the conservative Project Veritas website, he instructed law-abiding citizens about what to do if they encountered a “clown” breaking into their house.

“Know who and what your target is. Point that barrel center mass and pull the trigger,” Clarke directed. He went on to talk about calling 911 to “get this dead guy out of my house. He’s bleeding out and messing up my carpet.”

Quote: Australian authorities simply couldn’t stomach Donald Trump’s alleged mob ties, according to government documentspublished by Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper, The Australian, on Tuesday. The paper’s investigation reveals that Trump’s dream of building a casino in Sydney in the late 1980s was killed off by queasy officials who considered his operations in New Jersey “dangerous.”

In 1987, Trump had already opened two casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey—Trump’s Castle and Trump Plaza—with Trump Taj Mahal on its way. He was looking to expand the empire Down Under by bidding for a spot on Sydney’s picturesque harbor in partnership with a local developer, the Kern Corporation.

When the state government officials met that May to consider proposals for the site, they were presented with a police report that was unambivalent in opposing the plan for a one clear reason. “Atlantic City would be a dubious model for Sydney and in our judgment,” police noted, according to a summary contained in government minutes. “The Trump Mafia connections should exclude the Kern/Trump consortium.”

The White House chief strategist has told associates he never intended to do an "interview" with an editor at the American Prospect, a left-wing publication.

===

Here are some things that Bannon's colleagues tell me bother them about the interview — an article that appears to be so well-read that it's crashing the American Prospect's servers:

The liberal journalist Bannon called — Robert Kuttner — is no friend of Trump's. As Kuttner writes, "I'd just published a column on how China was profiting from the U.S.-North Korea nuclear brinkmanship, and it included some choice words about Bannon's boss. 'In Kim, Trump has met his match,' I wrote. 'The risk of two arrogant fools blundering into a nuclear exchange is more serious than at any time since October 1962.'"

Bannon undercut the president's stance on North Korea: "Contrary to Trump's threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: 'There's no military solution [to North Korea's nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don't die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don't know what you're talking about, there's no military solution here, they got us."

He openly talked about his internal fights with colleagues: "That's a fight I fight every day here," he said. "We're still fighting. There's Treasury and [National Economic Council chair] Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs lobbying."

He talked about changing personnel in a way that made him sound like the president: "I'm changing out people at East Asian Defense; I'm getting hawks in. I'm getting Susan Thornton [acting head of East Asian and Pacific Affairs] out at State."

On big question: As one of Bannon's colleagues — again, somebody who is generally sympathetic to him — asked me after reading the piece: "What will Kelly do when he sees this?"

Bottom line: The piece gives Bannon's enemies ammunition at a time he's extraordinarily vulnerable. They've been saying he's a leaker, a self-promoter, "President Bannon," etc. This interview plays right into their hands.

He thinks it will save him.

It explains his combative remarks about Charlottesville

In a letter sent to members of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun this evening, Rabbi Emeritus Haskel Lookstein (who oversaw Ivanka’s conversion), along with his successors Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz and Rabbi Elie Weinstock, said, “We are appalled by this resurgence of bigotry and antisemitism, and the renewed vigor of the neo-Nazis, KKK, and alt-right.”

The letter went on: “While we avoid politics, we are deeply troubled by the moral equivalency and equivocation President Trump has offered in his response to this act of violence.”

Afternoon:

I just found this on HuffPost. Most readers never watch Fox News, but this is worth viewing.

This is what Fox News Republican analyst Gianno Caldwell said: The very moral fabric in which we have made progress when it comes to race relations in America... He’s failed us. And it’s very unfortunate that our president would say things like he did in that press conference yesterday when he says, “tthere are good people on the side of the Nazis. They weren’t all Nazis and they weren’t all white supremacists.” Mr. President, good people don’t pal around with Nazis and white supremacists. Maybe they don’t consider themselves white supremacists and Nazis; certainly they hold those views. This has become very troubling. And for anyone to come on any network and defend what President Trump did and said at that press conference yesterday is completely lost and the potential to be morally bankrupt. I’m sorry, no, I believe that and I’m being very honest as one who has been talking about these issues for a very long time. I’m sorry that this is where we are right now. I hope the president learns a lesson from his press conference on yesterday. It’s disturbing.

=====

What Fox News pundits and guests said in the days before Charlottesville comments. Here are a few examples:

Trump on getting the facts right: “I wanted to make sure, unlike most politicians, that what I said was correct — not make a quick statement. I want to know the facts.” Fox News host Jesse Watters: “Perhaps the president was thinking, ‘You know what, I don’t have all the facts.’”

Trump on violence on “both sides”: “You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. I think there’s blame on both sides, and I have no doubt about it.” Newt Gingrich on Fox News: “So we have a two-sided violence problem, not just a one-sided violence problem.”

Trump on the alt-left: “What about the alt-left that came charging the, as you say, the alt-right?” Fox News host Sean Hannity: “Republicans need to do their job and also be ready to fight back, because you got the alt-left — they cannot stand this president.”

Trump on Confederate statues coming down: “Was George Washington a slaveowner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down … statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?” Fox News host Martha MacCallum: “You could make an argument for Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Are you going to change the name of the Washington Monument?” From Vox

Excerpt: The request came from three current congressmen and one former member, she said. She declined to name them, saying they told her they did not wish to be publicly identified yet.

The invitation comes as 27 representatives, all Democrats, have co-sponsored a bill to establish “a commission on presidential capacity.” The commission would carry out a provision of the 25th Amendment, which gives Congress the authority to establish “a body” with the power to declare a president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Under the bill, H.R. 1987, eight of the 11 members of the commission would be physicians, including four psychiatrists.

(Not a link) Here's her statement:"Racism and murder are unequivocally reprehensible and are not morally equivalent to anything else that happened in Charlottesville. I believe the President should have been – and still needs to be – unambiguous on that point. Following yesterday’s remarks from the President, I cannot remain on the Manufacturing Jobs Initiative. I will continue to support all efforts to spur economic growth and advocate for the values that have always made America great."

Morning:

Excerpt: (emphasis added)

CIVIL RIGHTS--This past week saw some weaknesses in American life. First, our inability to deal with a mentally ill President and second, our inability to deal with the results of Group Rights. Unfortunately, the two collided.

Most of the world, except for the GOP right wing, can recognize a crazy person. Americans have avoided electing mentally ill people as President before because candidates running for that office have first served in other elected capacities. Even though this informal requirement of holding prior elected office has still allowed a lot of unqualified people into government, it has also screened out the most mentally unbalanced from running for President. Had Trump been on the NYC City Council, he would have shunned a future in politics -- his ego could not have withstood the heat of constant criticism. Trump, however, only knew settings where he could point his stubby finger at someone and holler, “You’re fired.” Since he had no previous experience in public service, voters had no opportunity to see that Donny does not play nicely with other children.

During the election season, the military had to know that Trump was mentally ill. The NSA and the CIA certainly should have known since that’s one of their jobs – to assess the mental stability of world leaders and then devise strategic plans to protect the United States. As Trump is not the silent brooding type, his mental illness was obvious. As a histrionic and a narcissist with paranoid features, he reminds us of the Bonnie Tyler lyric, “sitting on a powder keg and giving off sparks.” In Trump’s case, the sparks have been daily fireworks. No interviews or diagnostic tests have been necessary to diagnose his limited mental capacity and grandiose sense of entitlement coupled by intermittent paranoia.

Excerpts: Mr. Trump’s behavior has become distressingly unsurprising. His default position is retaliation; when threatened, he succumbs to bombast. Washington politicians had hoped the recent appointment of John Kelly, a retired Marine general, as his chief of staff would instill some discipline in his chaotic administration. With similar hopes, others are trying to get Mr. Trump to fire his resident provocateur, Stephen Bannon. But the root of the problem is not the personnel; it is the man at the top. NY Times link above

And this from the Washington Post: "….some basic truths about Donald Trump: He does not like to be told what to say. He will always find a way to pull the conversation back to himself. And he is preternaturally inclined to dance with the ones who brought him.

As his top aides stood behind him in the lobby of Trump Tower Tuesday, looking like they were wondering whether it was possible to slide right into the pink marble, the president fielded questions about the aftermath of the Charlottesville confrontation between far-right marchers and those who protested against them.”

Here’s how Time Magazine put it: Still smarting from Monday’s forced statement condemning neo-Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists, Trump shoved a finger into the gaping wound of race relations in America. The President repeated his assertion that there is “blame on both sides” of the violence…… It was a sobering reminder of the forces that propelled Donald Trump to the White House in a campaign rooted on exploiting fears and feelings of dislocation, but also a sign of how, in the end, it was still about Trump.

This dirty Jew remembers every penny thrown at him.
The ones thrown from above, as we waited to be picked up from the public pool in my hometown on Long Island, our yarmulkes pinned to wet hair. By then, I was big enough to feel shame for the younger kids, who knew no better than to scurry around, as our local anti-Semites laughed.

I remember walking home from synagogue at my father’s side, in our suits and ties, and seeing a neighbor boy crawling on his hands and knees, surrounded by bullies, this time picking up pennies by force. I remember my father rushing in and righting the boy, and sending those kids scattering.

I remember when, at that same corner, on a different day, those budding neo-Nazis surrounded my sister, and I raced home for help. I remember my parents running back, and my father and mother (all five feet of her) confronting the parents of one of the boys, who then gave him a winking, Trumpian chiding for behavior they didn’t care to condemn. Even if it’s “kids with horns,” they told their son, he should leave other children alone.

======

And yet, in seven months of this presidency, in one single day in Charlottesville, Va., all of that is lost. A generation, and so much more, stolen away. There is the trauma of those assaulted by Nazis on American soil and the tragedy that is Heather Heyer’s murder that belongs to her and her family alone. And then there is what all the rest of us share — the pain and violence and the lessons we draw from them. Because the children who witness a day like that, and a president like this, will not forget the fear and disrespect tailored to the black child, the Muslim child, the Jewish child.

They will not forget the assault rifles that this government puts in these violent men’s hands, nor the chants that black lives don’t matter and that the Jews will not replace them — just as I will never not hear what that kid on the bike screamed or stop seeing my father helping a boy, crawling for pennies, off his knees.

While harking back to my pious, head-covered days, I am reminded of a notion that our rabbis taught us: The theft of time is a crime like any other. Back then it was about interrupting class — one minute wasted was a minute of learning lost. But multiply that minute by everyone in the room, and it became 15, 20 minutes, half an hour’s worth of knowledge that none of us could ever get back.

Saturday in Charlottesville was just one day, but think of that one day multiplied by all of us, across this great country. Think of the size of that setback, the assault on empathy, the divisiveness and tiki-torched terror multiplied by every single citizen of this nation. It may as well be millions of years of dignity, of civility, of progress lost.

This may be too technical for non-therapists, however there may very well be an element of truth to it:

“Perhaps the best parallel is the Wizard of Oz, who tells Dorothy, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, look at the fire and listen to the Great and Powerful Oz instead.”

=======

The clearest example of Trump’s inadvertent hypnosis over the American people can be seen in his constant lying. Joseph Goebbels famously said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” This was the reigning principle behind Hitler’s style of speech, which combined with his talents as an orator, allowed him to captivate crowds of thousands and bend them to his will.

Trump may have learned this lying tactic from studying Hitler'sMein Kampf. As Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote in the New York Times, "From his days peddling the false notion that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, to his inflated claims about how many people attended his inaugural, to his description just last week of receiving two phone calls—one from the president of Mexico and another from the head of the Boy Scouts—that never happened, Mr. Trump is trafficking in hyperbole, distortion and fabrication on practically a daily basis.”

Are you scared yet? Wondering if you’ve unknowingly fallen under Trump’s spell? Good. Be on guard. Don’t fall for the lies and the distractions, or ignore the power players (here’s looking at you, Mitch McConnell) who are really behind the curtain, doing the most possible damage. Don’t fawn over Trump’s latest tweet. If we’re aware, active, outspoken citizens, perhaps the truth will set us free.

President Donald Trump blasted establishment and left-wing media on Tuesday afternoon for failing to report the facts on violent left-wing protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia over the weekend.

In the main lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, the president grew combative after a throng of reporters started shouting questions about why he “waited” to specifically condemn neo-Nazis and white nationalists.

“There was no way of making a correct statement that early,” he said, defending his first statement on Saturday before the facts were in. “Unlike you and unlike the media, before I make a statement, I like to know the facts.”

As reporters grew more agitated, Trump continued defending his decision and condemning the media for their one sided reporting.

“You had a group on one side who was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent, and nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now.”

Excerpts: During his remarks Tuesday, the president argued taking down Confederate statues, such as the Lee statue, could lead to the removal of statues of other historic figures, such as George Washington or Thomas Jefferson.

Ever the businessman, Trump also took the opportunity to plug his winery in Virginia before leaving the press conference, saying it’s the reason he knows a lot about Charlottesville.

What was Kelly thinking?

NBC reporter Kristin Donnelly captured Gen. Kelly during today’s press conference where Trump said perhaps we should remove statues of Washington and Jefferson because they owned slaves, and refused to put the blame on the alt-right for the violence in Charlottesville. I wonder where he got this notion. This presser was a new low for Trump, and that’s saying a lot.

Do the two men on the right have the nuclear “football” - listening to the ravings of a madman who could
order them to start World War III. "Kelly stood off to the side while Trump spoke, staring down at the marble floor as the president doubled down on his widely criticized “many sides” rhetoric. Kelly’s stiff body language appeared to reflect the feeling among many Trump aides.

(On Trump’s late coming attempt to condemn alt-right protestors (without mentioning the term alt-right) Sure, he got some of the brush strokes right: the succinct assertion that “racism is evil”; the specific callout of the “K.K.K.” and “white supremacists”; the remembrance — finally — of Heather Heyer, who died as a consequence of the precise hatred that it took him more than two days to name.

But we should note that just hours before he stepped up to that lectern, supposedly to make things right, he used that infernal Twitter account of his to taunt a black chief executive, Kenneth Frazier, for resigning from an administration advisory board. That was unscripted Trump. And he was peeved and hostile, not penitential and healing.

We should also note that he began his brief statement on Monday by congratulating himself on the American economy and implicitly taking credit for what he said were a million new jobs. This is what our self-consumed, ungenerous president prefers to do — brag. He thumps his chest when he should be on his knees. (Emphasis added) The President Cannot Redeem Himself, by Frank Bruni, NY Times.

Excerpt: But in a climate where the president was constantly making threats, it was harder for the North to step back from the brink without looking like Trump badgered them into submission.

This doesn’t mean that North Korea has put off its threat against Guam solelybecause Trump’s eye is focused elsewhere. It’s more than likely they would have done it anyway. It’s just that the president’s refocus on Charlottesville helped create a climate where it was easier for the North to deescalate without losing face.

It’s a strange world where the US president being pulled away from a crisis with a foreign power actually makes the US safer — but that’s the nature of America under President Donald Trump.

What about Bannon?

There is the possibility that, if Trump fires Bannon, the scorned ex-staffer could try to turn the far right against the president — perhaps successfully.

There’s a good reason that white nationalists rejoice at Steve Bannon’s proximity to power. There’s a good reason that countless Americans look at that man so close to the Oval Office and fear his influence on their president’s mind and heart. How can Trump look the American people in the face and say that he unequivocally condemns the alt-right when one of the men who did more than anyone else to enhance its influence works down the hall?

But even as he attempted to clarify his views, Trump seemed eager to blame the backlash on reporters, in particular CNN. As the president was wrapping up a photo op related to international trade Monday, CNN correspondent Jim Acosta asked him why he had waited so long to condemn the hate groups by name and why he had not answered questions from reporters.

Critics saw the retweet on Monday evening as an attempt to deflect attention from his belated response to white supremacist violence, but also as an implicit effort to draw attention to crime within the African-American community: Huffington Post

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What do I think about and what I do I think about it?

May, 1, 2016

I migrated everything from April to the basement file cabinet, so fitting of Spring, this blog starts anew, unfortunately, again it’s Trump on my mind. The archives for the two months I have been sharing cyberspace with billions of bloggers are below.

If you are a new reader, welcome. I do this blog alone, but always welcome critiques and ideas from you, I mean you, whoever is actually reading these words.